The present invention relates to a pie cutting and serving tool which is particularly well adapted for cutting and serving slices of pizza pie of the kind which has become enormously popular in the United States only within the past 20 years. Earlier this century, prior art pastry cutting and serving tools have been developed including pivoted blades such as those disclosed by King et al. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,182,726; or Gans 634,330. Prior devices have been designed mainly for cakes and pastry pies and are not well adapted for the problems peculiar to sanitary serving of pizza pie. They do not include groove means for positively severing pizza cheese, pepperoni or pizza dough. Prior art blades are pivoted at the handle instead of at the rear edge corners of the spatula where the pivots are needed to apply sufficient pressure for positively cutting stringy pizza cheese. Cheese that may otherwise become festooned across a serving table in an un-sanitary fashion possibly requiring manual contact that may contaminate the cheese and or soil the hands with grease and cooking oil. Accordingly, there exists a modern need for an improved cutting and serving tool which can accommodate positive and complete cutting of pizza crust and cheese to obviate the need for touching any part of the pizza or dangling ribbons of cheese during the serving process.
The present invention is a pizza cutting and serving tool including pivoted blades that cooperate with a grooved spatula to sever and serve pizza in a quick, sanitary and convenient manner. The spatula has peripheral grooves formed therein for receiving cutting edge portions of pivoted blades when the blades "clamp-down" like a pivoted jaw to sever a slice of pizza. The blades can be locked in their closed position engaging the grooves to form sealed side walls of a handy serving tray.